Max Scheler

Max Scheler (mäks shā´lər), 1874–1928, German philosopher. He taught at the universities of Jena (1901–7) and Munich (1907–10), where he was influenced by Franz Brentano and the followers of Edmund Husserl. From 1910 he concentrated on writing, but he returned to university teaching at Cologne and Frankfurt after World War I. Scheler was concerned with the permanent values in human personality and human action; this concern brought him to important work in phenomenology, which spread beyond Germany, chiefly through his influence. In his early thought, for which he is best known, Scheler taught that love is the great principle of human association, and he regarded God as the source of all love. His most basic work is Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (2 vol., 1913–16; tr. 1973); other important works include On the Eternal in Man (1921; tr. 1960) and Man's Place in Nature (1928; tr. 1961).